She found herself to be quite worried that something would jump out at her, so she began to whistle. She thought it might make it harder for things to jump out at her, if she was whistling.

Chicago happened slowly, like a migraine. First they were driving through countryside, then, imperceptibly, the occasional town became a low suburban sprawl, and the sprawl became the city.

The only water in the forest is the River.

Then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life... You give them a piece of you. They don't ask for it. They do something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore.

Traveling through the Dragon's Den, it has just been explained that Haroun, the Ifrit, has been caught in a mirror trap. Here is the passage that follows: "So," said Silas. "Now there are only three of us." "And a pig," said Kandar [the mummy] "Why?" Asked Miss Lupescu, with a wolf-tongue, through wolf teeth. "Why the Pig?" "It's lucky," said Kandar. Miss Lupescu growled, unconvinced. "Did Haroun have a pig?" asked Kandar, simply.

He stared up at the stars, and it seemed to him then that they were dancers, stately and graceful, performing a dance almost infinite in its complexity. He imagined he could see the very faces of the stars; pale, they were, and smiling gently, as if they had spent so much time above the world, watching the scrambling and the joy and the pain of the people below them, that they could not help being amused every time another little human believed itself the center of its world, as each of us does.

None of us know where our stories come from. That's why writers make fun of people who ask us where we get our ideas... because we don't know.